Following a hard season of campaigning, Veterans Day holiday weekend offers us all a chance to reset our civic clocks.

And give thanks.

Established after the armistice that ended the first World War, the Veterans Day holiday allows families to confront the costs of freedom.

This weekend, a community coalition including the Orange County Fair and Event Center, Voice of OC and a series of statewide labor unions led by the Orange County Employees Association sponsored an annual event where people can commemorate the holiday on the grounds of the Heroes Hall museum – where a host of historic plaques tell a unique story about Orange County’s best.

These soldiers are memorialized on plaques that until 2016 were featured along the “Walk of Honor” at the county Civic Center in downtown Santa Ana. The area around the Walk of Honor turned into a makeshift homeless encampment and the plaques became seriously damaged.

Voice of OC published the text of the plaques as Opeds in part to publicize more about these heroes and their lives in Orange County. We continue to encourage readers to use the comment field under each story to help round out the biographies of these remarkable local residents.

In total, there are 32 plaques recognizing sacrifice from World War I through today’s war against terrorism. There are 11 recognized with the Congressional Medal of Honor, six honored with the Distinguished Service Cross, another 13 recognized with a Navy Cross and one with an Air Force Cross.

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Voice of OC has published a series in our opinion section of some of Orange County’s most notable veterans who received the highest honors the U.S. military bestows on soldiers for their heroic actions in combat. Plaques honoring these individuals are showcased at Heroes Hall at the Orange County Fairgrounds.

Kazuo Masuda was an Orange County resident who received posthumously the Distinguished Service Cross in 1945. Masuda was a member of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team and died while defending his men during an escape while fighting the enemy alone. His family was taken from Orange County and placed in a Japanese Interment Camp during the war. But this horrible injustice did not deter him from fighting for his country so heroically.